[Ottawa – May 22, 2015] We have seen the NDP in the lead more than once during the last three years and we have also seen tight three-way races. But we have not seen that since Justin Trudeau assumed leadership of the Liberal Party and…

– do away with minimum sentences– make receipts after carding mandatory again and make this information easily obtainable by researchers and the public.– free pony rides on Saturdays.– refund government fishery and ecology libraries.– reverse protected rivers decision.– reverse long form decision.– decriminalize sexwork.– like Norway implement 40% quotas of women and men on boards in corporations.

As long as parents continue to defend their kids as “good boys” and ignore social media posts that show them flashing gang signs and wearing gang colors, these young people will continue to fall through the cracks and meet an almost certain death.

The police seems to think Duran (14 year old) was killed as revenge for something his brother did.
So he may actually have been or have become a good boy.

It’s parents everywhere that miss these signs
(if they were in this case signs of bad behaviour at all and if Duran’s parents really didn’t say anything, see below)

My thoughts are that good kids behave badly sometimes- including me.
So calling Duran a good boy? Calling him a bad boy, shaming others like him, isn’t going to stop them making mistakes. Shaming doesn’t work as a parenting tool.

But the article calling the boy a menacing presence online because he flashed gang signs and posted a photo of a gun? That’s plain racism.

All of Texas posts guns on facebook and the number of white kids just being teenagers and flashing gang signs… Can’t count them even if I had a hundred hands.

I’ve even seen parents or aunts here in Canada do a gang sign *with* their kids. And in this case we have no idea what conversations the parents had with the boy. Most children even in those neighbourhoods don’t end up dead. And some kids wear colour signs to feel protected.

Not falling through the cracks for Hispanic and black children really means that a lot more money needs to be put in the public school system and a stop to broken window policies and school suspensions that shove them into the school-prison pipeline.

All this to say that we don’t know if Duran’s parents ignored those or other signs and that blaming the parents or (in other articles) the Hispanic/Latino community or the teachers in public schools is not fair or logical.

Until money and time is spent again on their school system and until racial profiling and the war on drugs stops, boys like him will be murdered by cops or by other neighbourhood youth.

I find, in a raft of academic grant applications I’ve been submitting, the ones with explicit feminist content always get turned down, and those more generally ‘social justice’ oriented get accepted. Am I paranoid, or is the university becoming a privileged (and highly camouflaged) site of sexism?

This month’s Justice Committee hearings on Bill C-36 were an absolute circus. And not the happy, I-want-to-run-away-with kind. We’ve packed up the wagons and put away the big tent, but there’s still an elephant in the room: many Canadians are rightly concerned that the health and human rights of the women, men and trans people in the sex trade are not being seriously considered by some of our elected officials.

And what better time to discuss sex workers’ health and human rights than the very week lawmakers, front-line workers, medical professionals and activists are all gathering for the 20th International AIDS Conference. There, it is readily acknowledged that criminal laws, including those prohibiting the purchase of sex, place sex workers at risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

Sex workers already walk a tightrope. They often have to navigate the disgust of neighbours and family, the patronization of feminist saviours and the harassment of law enforcement, hoping to clear the streets of all that we as a society would rather not see. They do all this while trying to make a living.

What is getting lost in the parliamentary process is the fact that sex workers are entitled to human rights, including the right to health. In Canada v. Bedford, the Supreme Court of Canada told our government, in no uncertain terms, that the health, safety and human rights of sex workers must be respected. By countering with Bill C-36, our government is announcing that it just doesn’t care. And when committee hearings stem from a place that fundamentally disrespects sex workers and counts their human rights as expendable, a meaningless spectacle is the inevitable outcome. Health as a human right barely made it into the tent.

How will Bill C-36 affect the health of sex workers in Canada? First, there is a growing global agreement that criminalizing sex work violates sex workers’ human rights, and that criminalizing the men and women who pay for sex is also poor public health practice.

When buying sex is illegal, sex workers need to rush to negotiate terms of safer sex and have no time to identify clients, let alone screen them. Their regular clients shy away, leaving them with fewer options to refuse clients who may pose a risk of physical harm. With the loss of regular clients, sex workers will face pressure to see more clients, leaving less time for safety precautions. Sex workers may also be reluctant to carry condoms if doing so could lead to police harassment or a client’s arrest.

Sex workers who work on the street must continue to meet in back alleys and remote locations where they have no backup and where it will be harder to insist on safer sex. If sex workers get caught in the criminal net under a ban on communicating near children, they could also be prohibited from areas where there are food banks, shelters and health clinics that offer harm reduction supplies and HIV testing, among other services. And since the laws effectively prevent sex workers from working indoors, those individuals will have a much harder time creating a familiar environment where they can take the necessary precautions to protect their health.

None of this bodes well for sex workers’ health and human rights, or for HIV prevention.

During the Justice Committee hearings, some supporters of Bill C-36 equated all sex work with paid rape. Sex workers were cruelly heckled from the gallery and some committee members discredited their experiences, selectively listening only to those who contend that prostitution is inherently violent. The fact that all sex workers who testified said Bill C-36 would make their work dangerous may have been recorded on tape — but it was not heard.

The truth is that Bill C-36, even with a few post-committee amendments, will deprive sex workers of their right to health. The Bedford decision, which addressed this elephant in the room head-on, will be all but erased.

The circus has come and gone, and Canada will be left to test its newest constitutionally flawed law on the backs of sex workers.

***

Our thoughts are with all those who lost their lives on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, including those researchers, medical professionals, activists and allies en route to AIDS 2014 in Melbourne.

Freddie Arps is a legal researcher with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

From a saying of Black ElkWatch where the branches of the willows bendSee where the waters of the rivers tendGraves in the rock, cradles in the sandEvery land is the holy landHere was the battle to the bitter endHere’s where the enemy killed the friendBlood on the rock, tears on the sandEvery land is the holy landWillow by the water bending in the windBent till it’s broken and it will not standListen to the word the messengers sendLife like the broken rock, death like the sandEvery land is the holy land